The present invention relates to system monitoring and status reporting systems, and more specifically to a system and method of reporting a status of another system through an electronic price label (EPL) system.
Retail establishments typically include a plurality of separate computer systems or networks. Each of these systems has a central back-office server. For example, the point-of-sale (POS) system provides item price and other information to checkout terminals after items are scanned at the checkout terminals.
Another system is the credit authorization system which allows a POS system to clear credit card and check purchases.
Another system is the EPL system. EPL systems typically include a plurality of EPLs for each merchandise item in a retail establishment. EPLs typically display the price of corresponding merchandise items on retail establishment shelves and are typically attached to a rail along the leading edge of the shelves. A retail establishment may contain thousands of EPLs to display the prices of the merchandise items. The EPLs are coupled to a central server from where information about the EPLs is typically maintained in an EPL data file. Price information displayed by the EPLs is obtained from the PLU file.
Retail establishment personnel must monitor the condition of these individual networks in the back office where the computers reside. Thus, when personnel are working in the merchandise and produce aisles, they do not notice system errors when they occur.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method of reporting the status of the one or more systems, including the EPL system, at many locations throughout a retail establishment. It would further be desirable to use the EPLs to display system status messages for these systems.
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, a system and method of reporting a status of another system through an electronic price label system is provided.
The EPL system monitors the status of the one system and causes an EPL to display a status message indicating the status of the second system. The second system may include a POS system, credit authorization system, or any other in-store system.
Under the reporting method, the EPL computer reads fault data created by the one system to determine the status of the one system, sends a data change message to an EPL within the EPL system to display a status message including a first message if the status reflects a normal operating condition and a second message if the status reflects a faulty operating condition. If the status reflects a faulty operating condition, the EPL computer may additionally clear the status message under operator command. Alternatively, the operator may manually clear the status message by engaging a switch in the EPL.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a system and method of reporting a status of another system through an EPL system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a system and method of reporting status of a system through an EPL system which is capable of monitoring the status of several different retail systems, including an EPL system, a point-of-sale (POS) system, and a credit authorization and reporting system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a system and method of reporting a status of another system through an EPL system that causes predetermined EPLs to display status and error messages.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a system and method of reporting a status of another system through an EPL system that causes predetermined EPLs to display time.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of monitoring applications such as transaction applications which communicate with a host system for PLU changes, bad check file updates, frequent shopper program updates, etc., and scale management applications, which download information to in-store scales for local bar code production (like at the deli counter).
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of monitoring in-store systems, such as air conditioning systems and freezer and cooler systems.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of reporting system status using a noisemaker within an EPL.